Of Shoplifting and Shotguns

Like many people in their wild, carefree youth, my friend and I did plenty of stupid things. The mistakes you seem to only make during that particular window, we made them. It was rare I could think of any one time I would have pinpointed as putting us in genuine danger.

This was some years ago, but I still remember the day being as clear as a flash of lightning in a midsummer night's sky. What may not be as clear, however, is my memory. This happened over a decade ago. Many brain cells have been burned since that day in the late 2000s, and I don't regret that as much as I probably should. What are writers without experience, you know?

My friend, we'll call him Jeremy, had been sleeping in the bedroom we shared. We lived with a mutual friend, and he had the room across from ours. As the house was a two-bedroom (and our other roommate wasn't much for parting with his privacy or the gigantic bed that seemed to occupy the vast majority of space), I moved into Jeremy's room when I grew tired of paying the exorbitant rates to live in a dorm room with a bunch of people I didn't know and didn't like.

We were living in a college town in Pennsylvania, and its already small population dwindled when class wasn't in session. Not much to do if you aren't in school, after all.

“It's so nice out,” I said one morning, lighting a cigarette and shuffling through a stack of CDs. “We should take a walk, get out of the house!”

“What time is it?” Jeremy said, his voice heavy with sleep and his eyes squinting to block out the sun as his body acclimated.

His alarm clock was a few feet from his bed, on the shared nightstand. “Oh, man, it's only 10:30?”

“I guess so,” I shrugged. I almost never slept back in those days, and time wasn't my strong point. I don't even think I knew it was that early until he checked.

“Give me a few minutes and then I'll get ready,” he muttered, licking his lips, before laying back down.

My fingers picked up one of the square plastic cases. The Velvet Underground and Nico. I held it up and looked at it. It was among my favorite albums at the time, and I found the cover mesmerizing in its simplicity. It was so aggressive for being so unassuming.

Jeremy couldn't have agreed less, and he would roll his eyes with enough force they could have chopped wood anytime I put it on.

I wanted to take a walk so badly at that moment, I considered putting it on. I knew, if anything, his distaste wouldn't let him sleep through such debauchery.

But, while it may have hurt to wait a few minutes for someone to wake up, I wasn't evil. Jeremy wasn't awake most days before noon. He worked afternoons and wasn't in school, so what point was there to be up early in a town where the two main things to go were college and the bar?

That said, a nice stroll was becoming more attractive by the minute. My entire body began to quake, and it dawned on me that I might have to go on one by myself if I had to wait much longer.

“You up, yet?” I asked.

“Soon,” Jeremy called over, with more than the slightest home of irritation to his booming, resonant voice.

And soon it was. Within moments, he sat up again, and mid-sleep, laced up his black sneakers. Caked with mud one picked up travelling around a town so small you don't need a car to get across, the laces were fraying at the end. You could tell his socks were white from the holes worn into the base. I may have suggested it was time for a replacement.

“Heck yeah!” The idea anyone would take a walk with me at that time was nothing short of a miracle. I was belligerent, impulsive, rude. I was a mess.

Frankly it surprised me. I half-expected him to go back to bed, to make up some excuse, and for me to wander around in a daze until some other bored fool invited me over. But here we were, travelers wandering in our own fantasy, on some quest from the king and queen. At least, that's how my imagination painted it.

“Can we go to the store?” Jeremy asked. “I have to get a few things.”

I had just gotten off my shift hours beforehand and didn't have to go in for another twelve. “I don't care,” I said, locking the door. “Can it be the one on the other end of town? I wanna take a long walk.”

He nodded. "Sure?” he said with a belly laugh.

We rounded the side of the row of townhouses and began our trek. Classes were in session, and so, we didn't pass many people. The few we did, we didn't know well enough to do much more than give a wave to.

“Crazy how everyone else is in class and we're just off for a jaunt,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Jeremy.

“Well, I mean, I assume not everyone is in class,” he said, looking ahead.

Cars passed by infrequently, most of them driven by people who were travelling on the main road that led from our town into the next one over. We kicked up dust as we climbed the steep hill, careful not to get hit.

The walkway was not designed for more than one pedestrian's safety or comfort, and it was narrow to begin with.

Soon, we found ourselves in the store's parking lot. Shoppers entered and exited. Quite a few were women with young children not yet ready for kindergarten, leaving with stacks of toilet paper poking out of plastic bags. Some were elderly couples, gone to buy to buy medicine and bananas.

I passed a guy in a baseball cap by a row of propane tanks, carrying a medium-sized bag of fertilizer to his truck. On his lunch hour, I thought. I remembered it was finals week.

The automated doors opened and we made our way inside. The shelves were lined with typical grocery store affair, like garbage bags and kitty litter. But, since it was a lawn-and-garden store, catering to lawn-and-garden needs, there was also a generous selection of potting soil, gardening tools, and bags of charcoal.

“What did you have to get?” I couldn't believe I hadn't asked yet. I suppose it wasn't something you typically thought to ask.

“Oh, just a pair of khakis,” Jeremy replied, scanning the store.

“New job?”

We stopped. He looked at me and shook his head. “No, just like em.”

He rifled through the limited selection of work pants when we came to them and grabbed the ones that fits. “Alright. Let's go.”

“That it?” I asked. “Nothing else?”

He shook his head. “Unless you have something you needed to get?”

“Nope. Really just wanted to go for a walk. You were the one who suggested the store.”

As we passed a display of miniature cars on the way to the register, Jeremy stopped and plucked one from near the top. A blue sports car with a white stripe running the length of it through the middle, he put it in his pocket almost as quickly as it took me to notice the theft.

We paid for the pants and left. Whether by sheer luck or some criminally careless employees, I was the only one who seemed to notice.

“You stole a car?”

The widest smile I had ever seen wrapped around his face. He laughed. “I stole a car!” he said, pointing at me.

“Not what I meant,” I said, groaning. “Were the pants-”

“Oh, I needed pants. I just also saw a car and wanted it, too.”

“This is how car thieves start out, isn't it?”

“Anyway, how should we go back?” Jeremy asked. “Head back the normal way or go this way?”

He motioned toward a dusty, well-maintained road to our left. Along both sides of it, the grass had a week of overgrowth, like the stubble so in vogue.

“Oh,” I said with a lilt. “I don't care.”

We made a turn down the trail. A strange feeling gripped me. It could have been written off as anything. At any rate, there wasn't much time to consider it, before we heard the words that would send anyone with a heartbeat into a panic.

“You have ten seconds to get off my property or I'm grabbing my gun.”

We threw our hands up and rushed briskly in the opposite direction, off this trail that turned out to have a reason for making me feel as I did. We were grateful the property owner had given us ten seconds. In many places, you're allowed to defend your home with lethal force - at your discretion, I might add - and Pennsylvania is one such place.

And in the town we were in, where the first day of hunting season practically comes third to Christmas and Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, plenty of folks cherished such protections.

He could have had his gun inches away and decided that we constituted a threat. Looking at Jeremy and I, a court may or may not have believed what he said. We didn't want to stay to find out, assuming the best scenario in that case.

We made our way back home, laughing and mocking one another. The man had every right to threaten us. I would have done the same in his shoes.

I've thought about this day occasionally, and whether he viewed his threat as mercy or if it was just some kind of etiquette I knew nothing about because I don't own acres of farming or hunting territory.

Honestly, the idea that it could be etiquette, rather than a true threat, terrifies me even more than what happened.